Dude Food

One of the things that defines dude food is this carefree, limitless way of eating that doesn't take into account moderation, common dietary nutritional advice; that it often maps onto stereotypical assumptions about foods that are masculine, masculine appetites, flavors and ways of eating and thinking about food that map onto these limitless, voracious, seeking satisfaction ways of eating. So, when you look at ˜dude' as a concept, as a linguistic term, it can definitely map onto men and to women, to masculinity and femininity. But dude food in particular gives us often very regressive, sort of stagnant definitions of how to be a real man.

One of the cookbooks I'm looking at, literally titled Dude Food, is the only cookbook I've ever seen where there are pictures of men just being dudes (...) and the only picture in the book of a woman is a woman without her top lying on her belly in bed with a lover. So the only way that women are configured into the recipes for dude food are as ways to be able to get women in bed and to be able to satisfy all of their appetites. It definitely maps onto these ideas about gender that have significant effects for how we think about gender equality and justice in the United States. Emily Contois

- - - - - - - -
image of the great Michel Piccoli via